2008 Hurricane Watch
Present activity in the Atlantic Basin is almost zero, but a look to the west gives a slightly different picture. A strong and organized tropical wave has developed off the coast of Africa and over a period of days, if favorable conditions should prevail, we might see trouble moving toward the Caribbean.
However to complete the face of today and yesterday we’ll go back to this same time period during the year of 1945 -- the first season of the Hurricane Hunters. A short excerpt from The 'Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle' reports on the early event that season. The first tropical depression was reported June 20, 1945 in the Western Caribbean and later grew into a Tropical Storm as it moved in a northeasterly direction past the western tip of Cuba. The storm continued in a north northeasterly direction across the Gulf of Mexico more than a hundred miles off the West Coast of Florida. As it crossed the warm gulf waters it grew in intensity to a Category 3 hurricane showing winds of 115 miles per hour. Then taking a bead on the North West Coast of Florida the first hurricane of the season made landfall after crossing Dead Mans Bay and slammed into a mostly unpopulated area of North Florida. Soon after coming ashore its wind intensity dropped off to that of a Tropical Storm as it proceeded in an east northeasterly direction across Northern Florida. The storm passed between Jacksonville and the Georgia State line where it made its way to the Atlantic in the vicinity of St. Mary’s, and Cumberland Island, Georgia. From there it proceeded up the East Coast as a Tropical Storm with winds around 60 miles per hour. It also carried heavy rains that caused some flooding in low-lying areas all along the East Coast.
By July 1st the storm had blown itself out over the cool waters of the North Atlantic, the sometime Hurricane and sometime Tropical Storm number I had traveled some twenty four hundred miles. And although it had made life miserable for hundreds of thousands of people there was one consolation – there were no fatalities as citizens were given a timely warning and they were able to prepare accordingly as the storm approached.
(Stay tuned for that potential storm moving west from Africa.)
Hollywood Lures Talent from New York and Europe:
As the talkies grew into sophisticated motion pictures producers, artists, writers and directors came in from Europe, beginning with a trickle and later becoming a flood as war clouds began to hang heavy, prior to World War II.
Garbo, Lubitsch and Wilder were probably the best-known talent in those early days to make their way from Europe to Hollywood.
Ernst Lubitsch, as an innovative writer/producer director, probably did more and got less public recognition in that silent to sound transition period than any person.
Having a German heritage and the name Ernst during that hateful Hitler era did little for his PR image.
The style he developed in pictures was referred to as The Lubitsch Touch. There was a self-censoring moral code put in place by industry leaders, following a spate of
Hollywood scandals and this code left little room for, on screen, indiscretion. Most filmmakers felt handcuffed by these restrictive Hays Office rules. Not so Lubitsch.
This master of bedroom comedy didn't have to resort to the filth of an X Rated film to get his point across. Camera moves in on a highly charged seduction scene, the picture of smoldering passion and steamy kisses have gone too; CUT.
Camera moves just outside the bedroom door. The French maid, her ear glued to that door and her flushed face reflecting embarrassed excitement at madam's indiscretion and misbehavior. The results are, in the minds eye of the audience, a scene played out vicariously through the maid and the door. As part of the audience, a dirty mind sees a dirty picture and likewise those with cleaner thoughts.
Subtlety was a large part of The Lubitsch Touch.
In those early years of sound pictures, creative writing was not Hollywood's strong suit, mass production was. Like Detroit, Hollywood churned out the product in assembly line fashion while playing the game of hype and copycat. Copy the box-office winners and spend big publicity bucks to put the best face on the losers.
Studio working quarters for writers were barracks type buildings and inside these buildings were tiny, cubicle like, work rooms. Parker and Benchley were probably the only writers in Hollywood already trained for that kind of hutch. Nobody liked it. Some rebelled at it while others just stewed and bridled. William Faulkner told his story editor that he couldn't write under those restrictive onditions. “I'm going home where I can get some work done," and he left. The powers at be decided to leave well enough alone and figured he’d bring in some pages from time to time. A week went by and no pages then two weeks, still nothing and they began to worry. Call his apartment; no answer. Send someone out there and see if he's all right. Faulkner was well enough, there had just been a misunderstanding of what he meant by going home to work. He was home all right, and working in Oxford Mississippi.
Writers Corner:
While we’re on the subject of Lubitsch here’s a short bit out of Garson Kanin’s Hollywood. In a conversation with Billy Wilder Kanin told about the way George S. Kaufman, Carol Reed and other writers would begin work on a story with lots of enthusiasm. And that lasted for a while, but later on they’d begin to find fault, then pick it apart and eventually abandon the project.
“Not me,” said Billy. “I always come back to it – so I can tear it down and abandon it again.”
“You know who did not work like that?”
“Who?”
“Our hero, Ernst Lubitsch. He always concentrated on the affirmative aspects – and kept looking for what was good and sort of ignoring the bad, sweeping it under the carpet – and finally he’d built so much strength that the weaknesses didn’t seem to matter.”
“We can’t all be Lubitsch,” Billy said.
“We can try.”
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Wall Street Turkey and Bermuda Triangle Down Under
2008 Hurricane Watch
For the past few days the Atlantic Basin has been rather quiet although a number of tropical waves generating rain and thunderstorms have given forecasters something to think about.
However, during the parallel time frame back in 1945 the western Caribbean was not so quiet.
Excerpt from ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’
June 20, 1945
Masters Field
Miami, Florida
As part of my daily routine I stopped by the operations office every morning, and on this day there was a lot of activity -- something was happening. I looked at the large hurricane advisory board and immediately realized what the hubbub was all about. It was the 20th day of June and the Miami Weather Bureau had just posted its first notice of the season. A tropical depression had formed north of Honduras and was growing in strength as it moved to the north-northeast.
I hadn’t thought much about it at the time since the activity was many miles away. But later that same day when word came that the first event of the season, a tropical depression had, in fact, grown into a tropical storm with winds clocked at 50 miles per hour and gusts up to 65 I began to pay close attention.
Aircrews were on a rotation basis and the luck of the draw dictated whether you got in on the chase or not. After confirming the news I hustled to the barracks and called out, “Hey, Primrose. Looks like something’s brewing in the Western Caribbean and the standby crew just took off to take a look. I kinda wish it had been us.”
Primrose chuckled. “I’m not sure about that. I’m thinking about those high altitudes and the fact that we’ll be freezing our arse off.”
“You’ve got a point, but I expect it’s like jumping into ice water – just hold your breath and if it doesn’t kill you in the first minute you’ll probably survive.”
(To be continued.)
UFO’s and The Bermuda Triangle still get attention from a mostly skeptical public
because of that little voice inside all of us that keeps saying – well, maybe.
For another take on the subject a British-Australian film company is about to produce a
thriller called Triangle based on happenings inside the Bermuda Triangle. For a short
Article click here.
Back to the Algonquin Round Table
Dotty Parker wasn't the only person at the table with troubles. Robert Sherwood had writers block and couldn't get going until Edna Ferber talked him into getting out of town as a possible remedy. He took her advice and left his friends of the Round Table, not to return for a year and a half.
Sherwood didn't come back empty handed, for in this time away from the city, he had written The Road to Rome and The Love Nest; both becoming Broadway hits.
Kaufman had another kind of problem; he needed a crutch in the form of a collaborator. The round table provided him a smorgasbord in that department with Connelly, Ferber and Woollcott all working with him at one time or another.
It was fun to exchange witty barbs and banter but who’s going to pay the tab. Life in America inside and outside the Algonquin was geared to high jinks and high living on fat
credit lines and margins set by wall street brokers by day and bathtub gin by night. Then it happened, "Wall Street Lays an Egg," is the way the show business trade paper
Variety put it. The 1929 stock market crash sent a chill throughout the country. That's when the scramble for real income outweighed the normal, theatre biased, and snob instinct toward the movies and Hollywood's lure began to be too much to resist. Round Table regulars were not exempt, from this need for cash, so more and more eastern based writers began to take the bait and travel west. Those giant weekly paychecks were of unheard of size in those days. Some writers were cashing five thousand-dollar checks as
compensation for their six days work, while a mill worker in Georgia was getting sixteen for the same time spent on the job.
Two years before the crash, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had been formed to bolster the industry image. It was in that same year 1927 when "The Jazz
Singer" brought sound to the silver screen and the Hollywood call for writing talent became very loud indeed.
Not all writers could adapt to the new format. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a good example of the celebrity author who wanted to, but could never make the transition to film. Fitzgerald was a complete bust as a screenwriter.
Hemingway never really tried it and his novels, as was Fitzgerald’s, were a challenge to put on the screen. Ben Hecht, a darn good screenwriter, talked about trying to
translate Hemingway to pictures; he said it was like working under water, murky water.
Westward bound Round Table regulars were, Parker, Benchley, Connelly, Kaufman, Sherwood and Stewart.
Benchley wrote much of his own comedy material and then performed his "Treasurer's Report" on screen.
Parker teamed with her second husband, Alan Campbell, to compile almost a score of screen credits including Academy Award Nominees, "A Star is Born," the original, and "Smash Up - The Story of a Woman."
Marc Connelly kept busy working on motion picture projects and TV.
His many screenplay credits included ‘Captain’s Courageous,’ Reunion in Paris,’ ‘I Married a Witch,’ and several adaptations of his play ‘Green Pastures.’
Kaufman wrote, coaxed and cajoled the Marx Brothers into their early film successes.
Sherwood had many credits and garnered Academy nominations for his work on "Rebecca', and "The Best Years Our Lives-"
Donald Ogden Stewart had numerous credits and Academy nominations before winning an Oscar for his work on ‘The Philadelphia Story.’
Writers Corner:
Maybe I dwell too much on rewriting, but then it probably is the most important part of writing.
That being said, there is no consensus on how to go about rewriting and that will probably never change.
However, here’s one system that strikes my fancy.
‘Once you’ve begun a novel, finish it before you revise a word. Don’t polish as you go. Finishing not only gives you a sense of accomplishment, but you’ll really know your characters and can spot pitfalls. Make notes of necessary changes that occur to you as you write,’ says writer Jill Marie Landis.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
For the past few days the Atlantic Basin has been rather quiet although a number of tropical waves generating rain and thunderstorms have given forecasters something to think about.
However, during the parallel time frame back in 1945 the western Caribbean was not so quiet.
Excerpt from ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’
June 20, 1945
Masters Field
Miami, Florida
As part of my daily routine I stopped by the operations office every morning, and on this day there was a lot of activity -- something was happening. I looked at the large hurricane advisory board and immediately realized what the hubbub was all about. It was the 20th day of June and the Miami Weather Bureau had just posted its first notice of the season. A tropical depression had formed north of Honduras and was growing in strength as it moved to the north-northeast.
I hadn’t thought much about it at the time since the activity was many miles away. But later that same day when word came that the first event of the season, a tropical depression had, in fact, grown into a tropical storm with winds clocked at 50 miles per hour and gusts up to 65 I began to pay close attention.
Aircrews were on a rotation basis and the luck of the draw dictated whether you got in on the chase or not. After confirming the news I hustled to the barracks and called out, “Hey, Primrose. Looks like something’s brewing in the Western Caribbean and the standby crew just took off to take a look. I kinda wish it had been us.”
Primrose chuckled. “I’m not sure about that. I’m thinking about those high altitudes and the fact that we’ll be freezing our arse off.”
“You’ve got a point, but I expect it’s like jumping into ice water – just hold your breath and if it doesn’t kill you in the first minute you’ll probably survive.”
(To be continued.)
UFO’s and The Bermuda Triangle still get attention from a mostly skeptical public
because of that little voice inside all of us that keeps saying – well, maybe.
For another take on the subject a British-Australian film company is about to produce a
thriller called Triangle based on happenings inside the Bermuda Triangle. For a short
Article click here.
Back to the Algonquin Round Table
Dotty Parker wasn't the only person at the table with troubles. Robert Sherwood had writers block and couldn't get going until Edna Ferber talked him into getting out of town as a possible remedy. He took her advice and left his friends of the Round Table, not to return for a year and a half.
Sherwood didn't come back empty handed, for in this time away from the city, he had written The Road to Rome and The Love Nest; both becoming Broadway hits.
Kaufman had another kind of problem; he needed a crutch in the form of a collaborator. The round table provided him a smorgasbord in that department with Connelly, Ferber and Woollcott all working with him at one time or another.
It was fun to exchange witty barbs and banter but who’s going to pay the tab. Life in America inside and outside the Algonquin was geared to high jinks and high living on fat
credit lines and margins set by wall street brokers by day and bathtub gin by night. Then it happened, "Wall Street Lays an Egg," is the way the show business trade paper
Variety put it. The 1929 stock market crash sent a chill throughout the country. That's when the scramble for real income outweighed the normal, theatre biased, and snob instinct toward the movies and Hollywood's lure began to be too much to resist. Round Table regulars were not exempt, from this need for cash, so more and more eastern based writers began to take the bait and travel west. Those giant weekly paychecks were of unheard of size in those days. Some writers were cashing five thousand-dollar checks as
compensation for their six days work, while a mill worker in Georgia was getting sixteen for the same time spent on the job.
Two years before the crash, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had been formed to bolster the industry image. It was in that same year 1927 when "The Jazz
Singer" brought sound to the silver screen and the Hollywood call for writing talent became very loud indeed.
Not all writers could adapt to the new format. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a good example of the celebrity author who wanted to, but could never make the transition to film. Fitzgerald was a complete bust as a screenwriter.
Hemingway never really tried it and his novels, as was Fitzgerald’s, were a challenge to put on the screen. Ben Hecht, a darn good screenwriter, talked about trying to
translate Hemingway to pictures; he said it was like working under water, murky water.
Westward bound Round Table regulars were, Parker, Benchley, Connelly, Kaufman, Sherwood and Stewart.
Benchley wrote much of his own comedy material and then performed his "Treasurer's Report" on screen.
Parker teamed with her second husband, Alan Campbell, to compile almost a score of screen credits including Academy Award Nominees, "A Star is Born," the original, and "Smash Up - The Story of a Woman."
Marc Connelly kept busy working on motion picture projects and TV.
His many screenplay credits included ‘Captain’s Courageous,’ Reunion in Paris,’ ‘I Married a Witch,’ and several adaptations of his play ‘Green Pastures.’
Kaufman wrote, coaxed and cajoled the Marx Brothers into their early film successes.
Sherwood had many credits and garnered Academy nominations for his work on "Rebecca', and "The Best Years Our Lives-"
Donald Ogden Stewart had numerous credits and Academy nominations before winning an Oscar for his work on ‘The Philadelphia Story.’
Writers Corner:
Maybe I dwell too much on rewriting, but then it probably is the most important part of writing.
That being said, there is no consensus on how to go about rewriting and that will probably never change.
However, here’s one system that strikes my fancy.
‘Once you’ve begun a novel, finish it before you revise a word. Don’t polish as you go. Finishing not only gives you a sense of accomplishment, but you’ll really know your characters and can spot pitfalls. Make notes of necessary changes that occur to you as you write,’ says writer Jill Marie Landis.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Early Hurricane Hunters and Sarcasm at the Round Table
2008 Hurricane Watch
Back to 1945 and a few excerpts from my book, The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Da Plane, Da Plane. Not exactly, we won’t stop at Fantasy Island; our mission is to spot tropical storms. And when we spot one we’ll follow along and take down all the data, then keep an eye on the storm and see what develops.
We’ll be flying the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer.
What’s a Privateer? Well, it’s a beefed up B-24 Liberator Bomber with a few modifications, a single tail assembly and seven feet were added to the nose to provide the extra deck space we needed. Then to fill other special needs they added a turbo supercharger to each engine and belly tanks fitted into the bomb bay for additional fuel. The Privateer was not only durable it also had longevity and flew virtually all the Hurricane Hunting missions from 1945 to 1952.
Home Base -- Masters Field
Prior to World War II South Field, which would later be known, as Masters Field was a component of the Pan American Airways system. Those Pan American passengers arriving at South Field that were taking international flights would be processed through the terminal building on the east side of the airport and shuttled via 27th Avenue to Pan Americans seaplane base at Dinner Key.
By the time Squadron 114 arrived in Miami Masters Field was a part of a complex known as the Naval Air Station, (NAS) Miami and it consisted of three separate fields Opa Locka, Miami Municipal Field and Masters Field. During World War II those airfields were used for training various flight crews including SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, TBF Avenger torpedo bombers and F4F Wildcat fighters.
Our highflying Privateers were capable of reaching all of the Eastern or Western Caribbean and then returning to base in one non-stop flight. To the East the outer range was the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, the Lesser Antilles near Guadeloupe. In the west it would be the north shore of Honduras and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Our crews, down from Jacksonville, were familiar with most of the geography we
were assigned to cover. In the past a typical navigation problem might be to fly from Jacksonville past the Bahamas as far as Turk Island, turn west to Cuba and from there head northeast to base. And of course that was good practice, but once you throw a hurricane into the mix your navigation problems become a bit more complicated.
Squadron 114 was made up of six Privateers equipped with turbo supercharged
engines and the latest radio and radar equipment available.
Fast Forward to June 18, 2008
With modern technology and an almost constant overview available through satellite photos, hurricane forecasters can give us a snapshot at any given moment of the day.
This one is from earlier today and it pretty much sums up the weather patterns for all of this past week.
No Development in the Atlantic
Even though there are three tropical waves in the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean a tropical development is not expected within the next 48 hours. Strong westerly flow in the upper atmosphere is found almost everywhere in these two bodies of water, and westerly flow aloft is not a favorable condition to tropical development. Until this flow slackens, do not expect any organization in tropical storms to occur. However, these tropical waves can produce thunderstorm activity, in fact, the tropical wave in the Caribbean may add moisture that leads to some thunderstorms across Florida on Wednesday.
By AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Mark Paquette
(Stay Tuned)
Sarcasm Drips from the Round Table
I guess it depended on the mood of each individual on any given day as to how cutting the sarcasm would get. Alex Woollcott's brag lines use to get a little thick at times,
and one day when he was a bit too high on himself, there was a thrust and parry exchange that went like this.
‘What is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?’
Adams shot back, ‘A Woollcott second edition.’
Mark Connelly was quite a storyteller and after a few years some of his stories got to be redundant. During one of these twice-told tales, Woollcott interrupted by saying, ‘My leg's gone to sleep, and if you don't mind, I think I shall join it.’
Edna Ferber couldn’t stand Alex and would have probably quipped, ‘Nighty night Alex,’
The group as a whole has been called intellectual lightweights and while this may be true, they turned out a lot of good work with more than a dozen Pulitzer prizes among them.
Best pals in the group were Dotty Parker, Bob Benchley and Robert Sherwood. At one time they all worked for Vanity Fair magazine. Dorothy was doing a critics column and blasted producer Flo Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke who was playing the title role in ‘Caesar's Wife,’ on Broadway. Ziegfeld had enough clout, with all his advertising, at the magazine to have Parker fired. Benchley and Sherwood showed their loyalty by following Dotty out the door.
Parker and Benchley rented a small office to work out of; Cable code PARKBENCH. They poked a lot of fun at themselves about the smallness of their office. Describing
the size of their work space, Benchley said, ‘One less cubic foot and it would be called adultery.’
Once when Benchley and his wife were on vacation, Dotty wrote him and said it
was so dull, she was thinking of putting three letters on the door, to liven the place up a bit, M E N.
Speaking of men, in an interview about Round Table regulars, Mark Connelly had this to say; ‘Dotty fell in love with any good looking bum that smiled at her. She would get
serious and, for the most part, the guys were out for a few laughs and a good time.’
If you've read much of Dorothy Parker's work you'll get a sense of the darker side of her life, her sharp wit being the veneer to cover that darkness.
She let her deep depressions get out of control a number of times and tried suicide. Lying in a hospital bed after one of her wrist cutting episodes, her friend Bob Benchley said, ‘Dotty, you've got to stop this nonsense or one of these days you're really going to hurt yourself.’
(To be continued)
Writers Corner:
Random notes on rewriting:
Are your subplots and lesser characters working?
Does this scene fulfill its needs?
Is that joke funny?
Do one full rewrite on descriptions of places and characters.
If you really focus, you might only add a word or two here and there, but one word could make a world of difference in the tone and color to a scene or character.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Back to 1945 and a few excerpts from my book, The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Da Plane, Da Plane. Not exactly, we won’t stop at Fantasy Island; our mission is to spot tropical storms. And when we spot one we’ll follow along and take down all the data, then keep an eye on the storm and see what develops.
We’ll be flying the Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer.
What’s a Privateer? Well, it’s a beefed up B-24 Liberator Bomber with a few modifications, a single tail assembly and seven feet were added to the nose to provide the extra deck space we needed. Then to fill other special needs they added a turbo supercharger to each engine and belly tanks fitted into the bomb bay for additional fuel. The Privateer was not only durable it also had longevity and flew virtually all the Hurricane Hunting missions from 1945 to 1952.
Home Base -- Masters Field
Prior to World War II South Field, which would later be known, as Masters Field was a component of the Pan American Airways system. Those Pan American passengers arriving at South Field that were taking international flights would be processed through the terminal building on the east side of the airport and shuttled via 27th Avenue to Pan Americans seaplane base at Dinner Key.
By the time Squadron 114 arrived in Miami Masters Field was a part of a complex known as the Naval Air Station, (NAS) Miami and it consisted of three separate fields Opa Locka, Miami Municipal Field and Masters Field. During World War II those airfields were used for training various flight crews including SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, TBF Avenger torpedo bombers and F4F Wildcat fighters.
Our highflying Privateers were capable of reaching all of the Eastern or Western Caribbean and then returning to base in one non-stop flight. To the East the outer range was the vicinity of the Leeward Islands, the Lesser Antilles near Guadeloupe. In the west it would be the north shore of Honduras and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Our crews, down from Jacksonville, were familiar with most of the geography we
were assigned to cover. In the past a typical navigation problem might be to fly from Jacksonville past the Bahamas as far as Turk Island, turn west to Cuba and from there head northeast to base. And of course that was good practice, but once you throw a hurricane into the mix your navigation problems become a bit more complicated.
Squadron 114 was made up of six Privateers equipped with turbo supercharged
engines and the latest radio and radar equipment available.
Fast Forward to June 18, 2008
With modern technology and an almost constant overview available through satellite photos, hurricane forecasters can give us a snapshot at any given moment of the day.
This one is from earlier today and it pretty much sums up the weather patterns for all of this past week.
No Development in the Atlantic
Even though there are three tropical waves in the tropical Atlantic and the Caribbean a tropical development is not expected within the next 48 hours. Strong westerly flow in the upper atmosphere is found almost everywhere in these two bodies of water, and westerly flow aloft is not a favorable condition to tropical development. Until this flow slackens, do not expect any organization in tropical storms to occur. However, these tropical waves can produce thunderstorm activity, in fact, the tropical wave in the Caribbean may add moisture that leads to some thunderstorms across Florida on Wednesday.
By AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Mark Paquette
(Stay Tuned)
Sarcasm Drips from the Round Table
I guess it depended on the mood of each individual on any given day as to how cutting the sarcasm would get. Alex Woollcott's brag lines use to get a little thick at times,
and one day when he was a bit too high on himself, there was a thrust and parry exchange that went like this.
‘What is so rare as a Woollcott first edition?’
Adams shot back, ‘A Woollcott second edition.’
Mark Connelly was quite a storyteller and after a few years some of his stories got to be redundant. During one of these twice-told tales, Woollcott interrupted by saying, ‘My leg's gone to sleep, and if you don't mind, I think I shall join it.’
Edna Ferber couldn’t stand Alex and would have probably quipped, ‘Nighty night Alex,’
The group as a whole has been called intellectual lightweights and while this may be true, they turned out a lot of good work with more than a dozen Pulitzer prizes among them.
Best pals in the group were Dotty Parker, Bob Benchley and Robert Sherwood. At one time they all worked for Vanity Fair magazine. Dorothy was doing a critics column and blasted producer Flo Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke who was playing the title role in ‘Caesar's Wife,’ on Broadway. Ziegfeld had enough clout, with all his advertising, at the magazine to have Parker fired. Benchley and Sherwood showed their loyalty by following Dotty out the door.
Parker and Benchley rented a small office to work out of; Cable code PARKBENCH. They poked a lot of fun at themselves about the smallness of their office. Describing
the size of their work space, Benchley said, ‘One less cubic foot and it would be called adultery.’
Once when Benchley and his wife were on vacation, Dotty wrote him and said it
was so dull, she was thinking of putting three letters on the door, to liven the place up a bit, M E N.
Speaking of men, in an interview about Round Table regulars, Mark Connelly had this to say; ‘Dotty fell in love with any good looking bum that smiled at her. She would get
serious and, for the most part, the guys were out for a few laughs and a good time.’
If you've read much of Dorothy Parker's work you'll get a sense of the darker side of her life, her sharp wit being the veneer to cover that darkness.
She let her deep depressions get out of control a number of times and tried suicide. Lying in a hospital bed after one of her wrist cutting episodes, her friend Bob Benchley said, ‘Dotty, you've got to stop this nonsense or one of these days you're really going to hurt yourself.’
(To be continued)
Writers Corner:
Random notes on rewriting:
Are your subplots and lesser characters working?
Does this scene fulfill its needs?
Is that joke funny?
Do one full rewrite on descriptions of places and characters.
If you really focus, you might only add a word or two here and there, but one word could make a world of difference in the tone and color to a scene or character.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Round Up The Usual Suspects
No Triple Crown Winner in 2008
The long shot Da’ Tara was not supposed to win the Belmont Stakes last Saturday – that spot was reserved for Big Brown. There was one problem – BB no showed. Oh, he was on the track but in no mood to run.
Da’ Tara on the other hand was early out of the gate, took the lead and Alan Garcia’s masterful hold on the reins held Da’ Tara to a reasonable pace and led all the way to the finish line. The win gave trainer Nick Zito his 3rd Belmont Stakes win in the past five years denying the Triple Crown to previous winners of The Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
For stories and speculation about why Big Brown failed to run click here.
Hurricane Watch:
Following Arthur’s opening salvo in the western Caribbean signifying the opening of Hurricane Season 2008 activity switched to the east. And so far those small systems have only generated tropical waves carrying light rain and thunderstorms. Hispaniola in the northeast Caribbean and Barbados and the Lesser Antilles Islands in the southeast have all been brushed by this early seasonal activity.
FYI: A general description of a tropical wave is; a weather system that moves from east to west and it can form any place from West Africa to the Caribbean along a line not too far north of the Equator.
One of the most notorious tropical waves originated off the coast of West Africa and eventually developed into Hurricane Mitch during the late part of the 1998 hurricane season. Mitch was a monster hurricane that caused unspeakable devastation in the western Caribbean. I’ll do a story on Mitch sometime later this season.
(Stay tuned for the weekly updates)
The Algonquin Round Table
Part One: Cast of characters
The Rose Room in New York's Algonquin Hotel was the place for that wild and witty group of writers and artist's to gather for lunch. It was the decade of prohibition, speakeasies, the Charleston, Calvin Coolidge and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Caustic wit and fun poking satire was their game and as they said in the film Casablanca, ‘Round up the usual suspects.’ Here’s a pretty good line up of Round Table regulars.
Alexander Woollcott was the NY Times drama critic and said, ‘The most interesting things in life are either immoral, illegal or fattening.’
Franklin P. Adams; a well known NY newspaper columnist, who could be counted on by his friends, to keep their careers alive by frequent mentions in his around town column called ‘The Coning Tower.’
Dorothy Parker, a versatile writer and the sharpest wit at the table, ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.’
Robert Benchley; humorist raconteur and the most easy going person at any lunch, if he ever made a cutting remark it was usually about himself, like this one, ‘It took me fifteen
years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.’
Robert Sherwood wrote ‘Abe Lincoln of Illinois,’ ‘Idiot’s Delight,’ and ‘The Petrified Forest’ among others.
George. S. Kaufman; ‘Satire is the play that closes on Saturday night.’
Edna Ferber; a little lady that painted her words with a wide brush and turned out works that matched her strokes, ‘Showboat,’ ‘Cimarron’ and ‘Giant.’
Mark Connelly was best known for his play ‘Green Pastures.’
Donald Ogden Stewart wrote books, Broadway plays and won an Academy Award for his work on ‘The Philadelphia Story.’
Frank Case was the owner of the Algonquin as well as host and benevolent godfather to the group. Frank was no dummy as he realized the free publicity he got from this Cast of
Characters.
To give you an idea about his benevolence; here's an account that happened to, and was told by John Barrymore.
Barrymore was walking across Time Square and ran into a fellow actor. They struck up a conversation and John's friend asked where he was staying?
‘The Algonquin.’
‘Isn't that a little rich for your pocketbook?’
‘Sure is, but the owner Frank Case is one heck of a good guy. To say he is generous is shortchanging him. Let's put it this way, Frank Case would give you,’ Barrymore
looked down at his torso, ‘he’d give you the.... my God, I'm wearing one of his shirts.’
(To be continued)
Writers Corner:
The idea for my writing notebook came from Somerset Mangham. Maugham’s notebook was a kind of journal while mine is a collection of conversations and tips that have been passed along by some of our famous writers.
This one is guaranteed to get your attention and might even make you think. Ray Bradbury says, ‘Write from the heart, not from the mind. Go ahead and jump over the cliff – build your parachute on the way down.’
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
The long shot Da’ Tara was not supposed to win the Belmont Stakes last Saturday – that spot was reserved for Big Brown. There was one problem – BB no showed. Oh, he was on the track but in no mood to run.
Da’ Tara on the other hand was early out of the gate, took the lead and Alan Garcia’s masterful hold on the reins held Da’ Tara to a reasonable pace and led all the way to the finish line. The win gave trainer Nick Zito his 3rd Belmont Stakes win in the past five years denying the Triple Crown to previous winners of The Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
For stories and speculation about why Big Brown failed to run click here.
Hurricane Watch:
Following Arthur’s opening salvo in the western Caribbean signifying the opening of Hurricane Season 2008 activity switched to the east. And so far those small systems have only generated tropical waves carrying light rain and thunderstorms. Hispaniola in the northeast Caribbean and Barbados and the Lesser Antilles Islands in the southeast have all been brushed by this early seasonal activity.
FYI: A general description of a tropical wave is; a weather system that moves from east to west and it can form any place from West Africa to the Caribbean along a line not too far north of the Equator.
One of the most notorious tropical waves originated off the coast of West Africa and eventually developed into Hurricane Mitch during the late part of the 1998 hurricane season. Mitch was a monster hurricane that caused unspeakable devastation in the western Caribbean. I’ll do a story on Mitch sometime later this season.
(Stay tuned for the weekly updates)
The Algonquin Round Table
Part One: Cast of characters
The Rose Room in New York's Algonquin Hotel was the place for that wild and witty group of writers and artist's to gather for lunch. It was the decade of prohibition, speakeasies, the Charleston, Calvin Coolidge and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Caustic wit and fun poking satire was their game and as they said in the film Casablanca, ‘Round up the usual suspects.’ Here’s a pretty good line up of Round Table regulars.
Alexander Woollcott was the NY Times drama critic and said, ‘The most interesting things in life are either immoral, illegal or fattening.’
Franklin P. Adams; a well known NY newspaper columnist, who could be counted on by his friends, to keep their careers alive by frequent mentions in his around town column called ‘The Coning Tower.’
Dorothy Parker, a versatile writer and the sharpest wit at the table, ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.’
Robert Benchley; humorist raconteur and the most easy going person at any lunch, if he ever made a cutting remark it was usually about himself, like this one, ‘It took me fifteen
years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.’
Robert Sherwood wrote ‘Abe Lincoln of Illinois,’ ‘Idiot’s Delight,’ and ‘The Petrified Forest’ among others.
George. S. Kaufman; ‘Satire is the play that closes on Saturday night.’
Edna Ferber; a little lady that painted her words with a wide brush and turned out works that matched her strokes, ‘Showboat,’ ‘Cimarron’ and ‘Giant.’
Mark Connelly was best known for his play ‘Green Pastures.’
Donald Ogden Stewart wrote books, Broadway plays and won an Academy Award for his work on ‘The Philadelphia Story.’
Frank Case was the owner of the Algonquin as well as host and benevolent godfather to the group. Frank was no dummy as he realized the free publicity he got from this Cast of
Characters.
To give you an idea about his benevolence; here's an account that happened to, and was told by John Barrymore.
Barrymore was walking across Time Square and ran into a fellow actor. They struck up a conversation and John's friend asked where he was staying?
‘The Algonquin.’
‘Isn't that a little rich for your pocketbook?’
‘Sure is, but the owner Frank Case is one heck of a good guy. To say he is generous is shortchanging him. Let's put it this way, Frank Case would give you,’ Barrymore
looked down at his torso, ‘he’d give you the.... my God, I'm wearing one of his shirts.’
(To be continued)
Writers Corner:
The idea for my writing notebook came from Somerset Mangham. Maugham’s notebook was a kind of journal while mine is a collection of conversations and tips that have been passed along by some of our famous writers.
This one is guaranteed to get your attention and might even make you think. Ray Bradbury says, ‘Write from the heart, not from the mind. Go ahead and jump over the cliff – build your parachute on the way down.’
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Hurricanes and Humorist's
2008 Hurricane Watch
Tropical Storm Arthur jumped the gun and flashed into the western Caribbean one day before the official opening of Hurricane Season 2008.
Arthur aimed its heavy rains at Belize, Guatemala, southern Mexico and western Honduras.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic basin a couple of tropical waves carrying rain showers and thunderstorms are moving in a westerly direction. As of this morning June 4th, four days into the 2008 Hurricane season Central America is dealing with the rains and flooding Arthur left behind. And according to the latest weather forecast those tropical waves give every indication of moving into the same area just vacated by Arthur.
The Hurricane Watch will be a weekly feature of this blog. My idea is to juxtapose the 2008 season with my first hand accounts of the 1945 season as documented in my book ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’
So stay tuned to this weekly blog and lets see what kind of parallel’s we can draw.
The Triple Crown
ABC will be covering the Belmont Stakes on Saturday June 7th. All the buzz is about Big Brown’s cracked hoof. To get both sides of the story – Doom and gloom or No big deal, Goggle News has compiled enough stories to give you a rooting interest. Click here.
Mark Twain and Will Rogers
I grew up in rural America during the depression years of the 1930’s and the two writers that made an impression on me wrote humor, they were Mark Twain and Will Rogers. And believe me; in those deep depression days, we needed all the humor we could find. Mark Twain was and still is a favorite with many, how can you forget such vivid characters as Tom, Becky, Huck and Jim.
Will Rogers is possibly remembered more for his performing in The Ziegfeld Follies, radio and movies more than for his writing. Rogers poked a lot of fun at politicians; here's a short quote that will give you an idea about his humor. He once said, ’With congress, every time they make a joke it's a law and every time they make a law it's a joke.’
In my hometown Jackson, Georgia we had one theatre, The Princess and there were only two stars that were true box office draws. Will Rogers and Shirley Temple. They drew crowds that would stretch around the block.
Americans loved Will Rogers, and to relate that in my own personal experience may give you an idea of how we all felt. On August 15th, 1935, I was eight years old at the time, and I'll never forget what happened. I had gone to the post office for the newspaper and saw written in a black type banner headline.
WILL ROGERS AND WILEY POST FEARED DEAD
IN ALASKA AIR CRASH.
As the meaning of that dark headline began to sink in and I ran toward our house, tears began to cascade down my cheeks. Will Rogers was us, he was part of our family, our
hopes and our dreams. With his wit and humor he made it a little easier to bare the burden of the depression years. I was not alone with my tears for, in the next few days,
most of America found a few moments to reflect on our loss with many being moved to a good cry.
Writers Corner:
Writers write best about what they know – sounds cliché, but it’s true. You might also add this bit, there’s a tinge of autobiography and a hint of bias in all of it.
Margaret Mitchell's ‘Gone the Wind’ is an excellent example. Ms. Mitchell based her great American novels location in and around Jonesboro where her ancestors had lived, and a number of her characters were based on either relatives or people she knew.
Ernest Hemingway drew from a real life experience when he wrote ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ Donald Ogden Stewart, Oscar winning writer, and friend of Hemmingway's tells that, while in Spain together they had made it into American newspapers as, ‘bullfighting Americanos’ in Pamplona in 1924. Then when ‘The Sun Also Rises’ was published in 1926, Stewart was mystified by the praise lavished on it. It seemed to him only an accurate journalistic account of what had actually happened during their trip to Pamplona with a group of friends, including some British Royalty. (Brett Ashley in the book).
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Tropical Storm Arthur jumped the gun and flashed into the western Caribbean one day before the official opening of Hurricane Season 2008.
Arthur aimed its heavy rains at Belize, Guatemala, southern Mexico and western Honduras.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic basin a couple of tropical waves carrying rain showers and thunderstorms are moving in a westerly direction. As of this morning June 4th, four days into the 2008 Hurricane season Central America is dealing with the rains and flooding Arthur left behind. And according to the latest weather forecast those tropical waves give every indication of moving into the same area just vacated by Arthur.
The Hurricane Watch will be a weekly feature of this blog. My idea is to juxtapose the 2008 season with my first hand accounts of the 1945 season as documented in my book ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’
So stay tuned to this weekly blog and lets see what kind of parallel’s we can draw.
The Triple Crown
ABC will be covering the Belmont Stakes on Saturday June 7th. All the buzz is about Big Brown’s cracked hoof. To get both sides of the story – Doom and gloom or No big deal, Goggle News has compiled enough stories to give you a rooting interest. Click here.
Mark Twain and Will Rogers
I grew up in rural America during the depression years of the 1930’s and the two writers that made an impression on me wrote humor, they were Mark Twain and Will Rogers. And believe me; in those deep depression days, we needed all the humor we could find. Mark Twain was and still is a favorite with many, how can you forget such vivid characters as Tom, Becky, Huck and Jim.
Will Rogers is possibly remembered more for his performing in The Ziegfeld Follies, radio and movies more than for his writing. Rogers poked a lot of fun at politicians; here's a short quote that will give you an idea about his humor. He once said, ’With congress, every time they make a joke it's a law and every time they make a law it's a joke.’
In my hometown Jackson, Georgia we had one theatre, The Princess and there were only two stars that were true box office draws. Will Rogers and Shirley Temple. They drew crowds that would stretch around the block.
Americans loved Will Rogers, and to relate that in my own personal experience may give you an idea of how we all felt. On August 15th, 1935, I was eight years old at the time, and I'll never forget what happened. I had gone to the post office for the newspaper and saw written in a black type banner headline.
WILL ROGERS AND WILEY POST FEARED DEAD
IN ALASKA AIR CRASH.
As the meaning of that dark headline began to sink in and I ran toward our house, tears began to cascade down my cheeks. Will Rogers was us, he was part of our family, our
hopes and our dreams. With his wit and humor he made it a little easier to bare the burden of the depression years. I was not alone with my tears for, in the next few days,
most of America found a few moments to reflect on our loss with many being moved to a good cry.
Writers Corner:
Writers write best about what they know – sounds cliché, but it’s true. You might also add this bit, there’s a tinge of autobiography and a hint of bias in all of it.
Margaret Mitchell's ‘Gone the Wind’ is an excellent example. Ms. Mitchell based her great American novels location in and around Jonesboro where her ancestors had lived, and a number of her characters were based on either relatives or people she knew.
Ernest Hemingway drew from a real life experience when he wrote ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ Donald Ogden Stewart, Oscar winning writer, and friend of Hemmingway's tells that, while in Spain together they had made it into American newspapers as, ‘bullfighting Americanos’ in Pamplona in 1924. Then when ‘The Sun Also Rises’ was published in 1926, Stewart was mystified by the praise lavished on it. It seemed to him only an accurate journalistic account of what had actually happened during their trip to Pamplona with a group of friends, including some British Royalty. (Brett Ashley in the book).
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Memorial Day and a few words from A. Lincoln
Memorial Day is a good time for reflection, but there are other days during the year when I sometimes think about my fallen mates and all the others that didn’t make it back.
I wrote down some of those thoughts in my book ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’After the war was over, if you were still in uniform and not planning to make the military a career you were somewhere accumulating enough points and waiting around for your discharge. I was at Whiting Field in northwest Florida.
Here’s a short excerpt from The Hurricane Hunters about those days in early 1946.
‘The Navy brass had probably made some assessments and decided to do a little arm twisting in order to recruit some Navy reserves to reenlist as regular Navy. I was offered a pay grade increase and a bonus to reenlist and go to Pennsylvania to study jet engines... I declined the Navy’s offer to go to jet school, and was given my discharge from the Navy at New Orleans on May 31, 1946. From there I took a bus to Atlanta where I had a full summer of work ahead of me in order to prepare for my college entrance exams.
The slow bus ride from New Orleans to Atlanta was a time of reflection, as I began to wonder how some of us skate through a war and live while others die.
Our bus was loaded with ex military, some of us still in uniform and some in civvies. I could see in the faces of most of the guys a kind of excitement about going back to civilian life. And I was looking forward to it too, but I couldn’t seem to shake a strong feeling of guilt when I thought about the ones that would never return.
I could still hear the sound of muster on that morning of June 6, 1944 and the chief’s response, “All present or accounted for, Sir.” Followed by the Commanders announcement that the invasion of Europe had begun and our troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy.
As I looked out the bus window at the landscape I remembered standing among my mates, at parade rest, that morning. Then I heard Charlie Wilson’s voice at the bar when he told me of the terrible explosion that had turned briefing room A into a fiery furnace. But before that could all sink in I recalled some comforting words, fragments of Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg and while he spoke of the Civil War, by extension his talk could be about the fallen in all of America’s wars. ‘We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is all together fitting and proper that we should do this…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.’
Writers Corner:
You have a great passion to write the book. You’ve done the research, completed the first draft plus a few rewrites. The passion’s still there, but it’s out of balance -- something’s missing. So far your rewrites haven’t cured the problem. Your frustration boils over and you are about to delete or throw the whole thing into the trash. Don’t do it. Give it some time and use the Hemingway approach. Put your conscious thoughts about the book on hold and give your subconscious a chance to work its magic.
Then after a time, if you’re still stuck for an answer, go to a good story editor.
Oh, one more thing, here’s some advice on the subject from a couple of pretty good minds.
Thomas Edison said, ‘Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try one more time.’
Albert Einstein put it this way. ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.’
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Website: www.tombarnes39.com
I wrote down some of those thoughts in my book ‘The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’After the war was over, if you were still in uniform and not planning to make the military a career you were somewhere accumulating enough points and waiting around for your discharge. I was at Whiting Field in northwest Florida.
Here’s a short excerpt from The Hurricane Hunters about those days in early 1946.
‘The Navy brass had probably made some assessments and decided to do a little arm twisting in order to recruit some Navy reserves to reenlist as regular Navy. I was offered a pay grade increase and a bonus to reenlist and go to Pennsylvania to study jet engines... I declined the Navy’s offer to go to jet school, and was given my discharge from the Navy at New Orleans on May 31, 1946. From there I took a bus to Atlanta where I had a full summer of work ahead of me in order to prepare for my college entrance exams.
The slow bus ride from New Orleans to Atlanta was a time of reflection, as I began to wonder how some of us skate through a war and live while others die.
Our bus was loaded with ex military, some of us still in uniform and some in civvies. I could see in the faces of most of the guys a kind of excitement about going back to civilian life. And I was looking forward to it too, but I couldn’t seem to shake a strong feeling of guilt when I thought about the ones that would never return.
I could still hear the sound of muster on that morning of June 6, 1944 and the chief’s response, “All present or accounted for, Sir.” Followed by the Commanders announcement that the invasion of Europe had begun and our troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy.
As I looked out the bus window at the landscape I remembered standing among my mates, at parade rest, that morning. Then I heard Charlie Wilson’s voice at the bar when he told me of the terrible explosion that had turned briefing room A into a fiery furnace. But before that could all sink in I recalled some comforting words, fragments of Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg and while he spoke of the Civil War, by extension his talk could be about the fallen in all of America’s wars. ‘We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is all together fitting and proper that we should do this…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.’
Writers Corner:
You have a great passion to write the book. You’ve done the research, completed the first draft plus a few rewrites. The passion’s still there, but it’s out of balance -- something’s missing. So far your rewrites haven’t cured the problem. Your frustration boils over and you are about to delete or throw the whole thing into the trash. Don’t do it. Give it some time and use the Hemingway approach. Put your conscious thoughts about the book on hold and give your subconscious a chance to work its magic.
Then after a time, if you’re still stuck for an answer, go to a good story editor.
Oh, one more thing, here’s some advice on the subject from a couple of pretty good minds.
Thomas Edison said, ‘Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try one more time.’
Albert Einstein put it this way. ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.’
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
Website: www.tombarnes39.com
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Nazi Loot, Next the Belmont and The Keystone Cops
Nazi-Looted Painting Recovered at Christie's
ARTINFO - New York, NY, USA
By ARTINFO LONDON—A 17th-century painting looted by Nazis during World War II has been discovered among offerings at Christie's London and will be returned ...
For story Click Here
Inside: The Goring Collection. In search of Nazi stolen art Intelligence agent Sue Grady interviews Holocaust descendent regarding families lost Monet.
…”Several days after we laid Uncle Bernie to rest I thought about the incident and returned to the gallery to inquire about the painting, but they brushed me off. They told me they couldn't say anything during the investigation and it seemed that they had absolutely no interest in helping me find the painting."
"That night at the gallery, did you think it was your family painting?" Sue asked.
"Well, Uncle Bernie obviously did, and it certainly looked like the photo I saw in the German magazine."
"Tell me about that old painting and where it came from," Sue urged.
"It was a gift left to the family by my great grandfather. It seems that the old man went to Paris sometime around 1895 and purchased a painting from an artist by the name of Claude Monet. It was a beautiful picture titled Garden at Giverny and of course as Monet's reputation grew so did the worth of the painting. And from what I can tell, it became a source of great pride to the family."
"What happened to the painting?" Sue asked.
"The Nazi's came to the house and took it away just before my Grandparents and Uncle Bernie were shipped off to the concentration camp."
In the Quest for the Triple Crown
For a collection of Preakness and Big Brown stories both print and video: Click Here.
Let’s go to the Movies Part VI Final chapter.
Jesse and Sam were learning a basic lesson about showmanship. The audience makes the show a success or failure. It happens at the Kentucky Derby, the Worlds Fair, and it happens in the theatre. Emotion as well as laughter is infectious. Sam and Jesse would eventually become masters at choosing the size and makeup of a preview audience. The
ultimate judge of a films success or failure is not an executive or even the critic; it's the people who pay at the box office. Movie magic is really made by the audience.
Those film buyers that viewed Brewster’s Millions laughed and to the delight of Jesse and Sam they also bought the picture.
It was during this same time frame and not far away in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, at the Edison Company and the Biograph Studios, D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett were
working on their styles of movie magic.
Griffith discovered the first major film star, a young Canadian actress Mary Pickford, who would later be known as America’s sweetheart. D.W. Griffith was the first
producer of the screen spectacular, making two giants of that genre, ‘Birth Of A Nation’ and ‘Intolerance.’
Mack Sennett went the comedy route and signed future stars Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle along with Mabel Normand, the girl most likely to be tied to the railroad tracks by the hands of some shady villain.
Sennett's Keystone Company was manufacturing one and two-reel farce, featuring the likes of crossed eyed Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin and Marie Dressler. And when you mix the talent of Sennett with his new found screen personalities you wind up with knock down, slapstick, pie in the face comedy forever known as The Keystone Cops. Those fast paced flickering comedies, turned out by the dozens, lasted for years and gave future comedians material to emulate and copy forever.
In the meantime sign makers in California were performing surgery on the big white HOLLYWOODLAND sign trimming off the LAND portion and leaving HOLLYWOOD to look down on and advertise the motion picture industry in that valley of make-believe.
Orange groves and farm land would give way to masses of people coming out to seek their fortune in the new found movie industry of Southern California.
Coming Attractions:
We’ll listen to some banter and wit at The Algonquin Round Table.
Hurricane watch begins June 1st and ends November 30th
Writers Corner:
Coming on the heels of the Keystone Cops is a timely observation made by one of Broadway’s most prolific comedy writers. Neil Simon develops character first, and then plot. But he has said on a number of occasions that the main force that drives his comedy is conflict.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
ARTINFO - New York, NY, USA
By ARTINFO LONDON—A 17th-century painting looted by Nazis during World War II has been discovered among offerings at Christie's London and will be returned ...
For story Click Here
Inside: The Goring Collection. In search of Nazi stolen art Intelligence agent Sue Grady interviews Holocaust descendent regarding families lost Monet.
…”Several days after we laid Uncle Bernie to rest I thought about the incident and returned to the gallery to inquire about the painting, but they brushed me off. They told me they couldn't say anything during the investigation and it seemed that they had absolutely no interest in helping me find the painting."
"That night at the gallery, did you think it was your family painting?" Sue asked.
"Well, Uncle Bernie obviously did, and it certainly looked like the photo I saw in the German magazine."
"Tell me about that old painting and where it came from," Sue urged.
"It was a gift left to the family by my great grandfather. It seems that the old man went to Paris sometime around 1895 and purchased a painting from an artist by the name of Claude Monet. It was a beautiful picture titled Garden at Giverny and of course as Monet's reputation grew so did the worth of the painting. And from what I can tell, it became a source of great pride to the family."
"What happened to the painting?" Sue asked.
"The Nazi's came to the house and took it away just before my Grandparents and Uncle Bernie were shipped off to the concentration camp."
In the Quest for the Triple Crown
For a collection of Preakness and Big Brown stories both print and video: Click Here.
Let’s go to the Movies Part VI Final chapter.
Jesse and Sam were learning a basic lesson about showmanship. The audience makes the show a success or failure. It happens at the Kentucky Derby, the Worlds Fair, and it happens in the theatre. Emotion as well as laughter is infectious. Sam and Jesse would eventually become masters at choosing the size and makeup of a preview audience. The
ultimate judge of a films success or failure is not an executive or even the critic; it's the people who pay at the box office. Movie magic is really made by the audience.
Those film buyers that viewed Brewster’s Millions laughed and to the delight of Jesse and Sam they also bought the picture.
It was during this same time frame and not far away in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, at the Edison Company and the Biograph Studios, D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett were
working on their styles of movie magic.
Griffith discovered the first major film star, a young Canadian actress Mary Pickford, who would later be known as America’s sweetheart. D.W. Griffith was the first
producer of the screen spectacular, making two giants of that genre, ‘Birth Of A Nation’ and ‘Intolerance.’
Mack Sennett went the comedy route and signed future stars Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle along with Mabel Normand, the girl most likely to be tied to the railroad tracks by the hands of some shady villain.
Sennett's Keystone Company was manufacturing one and two-reel farce, featuring the likes of crossed eyed Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin and Marie Dressler. And when you mix the talent of Sennett with his new found screen personalities you wind up with knock down, slapstick, pie in the face comedy forever known as The Keystone Cops. Those fast paced flickering comedies, turned out by the dozens, lasted for years and gave future comedians material to emulate and copy forever.
In the meantime sign makers in California were performing surgery on the big white HOLLYWOODLAND sign trimming off the LAND portion and leaving HOLLYWOOD to look down on and advertise the motion picture industry in that valley of make-believe.
Orange groves and farm land would give way to masses of people coming out to seek their fortune in the new found movie industry of Southern California.
Coming Attractions:
We’ll listen to some banter and wit at The Algonquin Round Table.
Hurricane watch begins June 1st and ends November 30th
Writers Corner:
Coming on the heels of the Keystone Cops is a timely observation made by one of Broadway’s most prolific comedy writers. Neil Simon develops character first, and then plot. But he has said on a number of occasions that the main force that drives his comedy is conflict.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
